Oyatsupan: shokupan and curry pan, before the afternoon cutoff

We used to treat Beaverton like a maybe. Then we ate a katsu kare pan at Oyatsupan and the maybe ENDED! This is a Japanese bakery, not a croissant shop that added matcha, and bakery fans have been telling us for years to just drive already. Hiroyuki Horie opened it in May 2016 at 16025 SW Regatta Lane after more than two decades at Pasco Shikishima in Japan, and the case is the argument: shokupan, curry bread, melon pan, anpan, Japanese cheesecake, egg salad on milk bread. You drive. You get there before the afternoon dies. You leave with a bag that does not exist on Hawthorne, and we are so glad we finally listened.

The first thing we notice is how warm and practical the room feels — clean, contemporary, a little simple on purpose, with a big easy parking lot that already makes this feel like a different metro than a Hawthorne meter. We can also see the shokupan loaves stacked pale and square, the curry donuts sitting in that deep fried-gold color, and melon pan with a crackly sugar crust that looks almost like a cookie lid on a soft bun. There is fun merchandise, including the blue-jay branding from their opening-day story, when a jay landed on the pickup counter with a cherry blossom in its beak. Drinks are dine-in. You can sit. You can also treat it as a pickup mission and get back on the road. Either works. What does NOT work is assuming Portland hours!

The clock is the first thing we tell people, and we are going to say it loudly. Oyatsupan closes mid-afternoon — 8 a.m. to 3:30 every day, and online pickup starts later than the walk-in door. This is not a “pop in after a 4 p.m. meeting” bakery. The curry donuts are fried in batches through the day; the shokupan is an overnight ferment with yeast they culture from raisins. If you arrive at 3:10, you are shopping leftovers and hoping. We aim for opening or late morning, especially on weekends, because people who write about this stop keep saying the same thing we felt: get there early, when the case is full and everything is still warm.

Curry pan FIRST — specifically the katsu kare pan if it is still on the board. It is a bread boat of house beef curry under a panko pork cutlet, savory and a little shiny, and that is the item we drove for. The curry donut is the other half of that lane, fried, stuffed with the same Japanese-style beef curry, and it is the thing people who “just want one thing” still split in the parking lot. Then shokupan. Thin slice or thick, kaku or yama — buy a loaf! This is milk bread with a real ferment, pillowy and buttery, not grocery pullman, and it is the reason the egg salad sandwich works. Get that sandwich if you want lunch in one move: egg salad on their shokupan is the everyday Japanese bakery order, and we do not talk ourselves out of it. Castella doughnuts and the Japanese cheesecake are the sweet stop, light and jiggly. Melon pan if you want the crackly-sugar bun; anpan if you want sweet adzuki. We have also seen salt bread, chocolate coronets, and seasonal cream doughnuts land on the board. We leave with a curry item, a loaf, and one sweet. That is a full run.

Hiro’s baking talk is subtractive — fewer ingredients, more attention — and you taste it in the bread more than in a frosting. Do not skip the loaf because the fried things look louder. The shop is nut-free, which is useful to know and not the same as gluten-free. They take online pickup, and if you need a specific cake their forms ask for lead time. Worth the drive, and we mean the actual drive: Regatta Lane, Beaverton, not a secret inner-Portland door. This is not a souvenir run and it is not a “quick detour.” Plan it as the destination, then do the rest of the westside. If the katsu kare pan is gone, get the curry donut and the shokupan and do not rewrite the day. We have never regretted the mileage. We have regretted showing up at 3:20!

More on the bakery: Oyatsupan Bakers